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Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris breed on several sub-Antarctic islands and archipelagoes in the Southern Ocean.  Approximately 67% of the global population (estimated at c. 600 000 breeding pairs) breeds in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)*, and most of these visit Argentinian waters throughout the year.  Likewise, the area is being heavily exploited by several fishing activities (jiggers, trawlers and longliners) of which the trawl fishery is considerably larger than the rest of the other fleets.

Mortalities associated with collisions with warp cables have been recently reported in trawl fisheries operating in Argentine waters.  As a result the annual mortality could be in the order of several hundreds or even thousands of albatrosses.

Sofía Copello and Juan Pablo Seco Pon of the Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (CONICET-UNMDP, Argentina) and colleagues have recently deployed 10 satellite-tracking devices on adult Black-browed Albatrosses attending trawling vessels with the aim of analyzing the degree of overlap and interactions between these top predators and the large national trawl fishery on the Patagonian Shelf.  The birds were captured alive by means of cast and hoop nets during their association with fishing vessels in the austral winter.

This project was initially supported by the Albatross and Petrel Agreement (Project ACAP 2010-10) and is currently funded by the National Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology (ANPCyT-FONCyT, Argentina) and the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina).  We plan to continue deploying tags on albatrosses and petrels in the coming years.

Seabirds, mainly Black-browed Albatrosses, attending fishing operations on the Patagonian Shelf
Photograph by Sofía Copello

Sofía Copello & Juan Pablo Seco Pon, ACAP South American News Correspondent, 28 June 2012

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.